Golden Slumbers
by MiKEsGrrrl
Summary: Is Gene mad, in a coma, or lost in time?


**Golden Slumbers**

Gene was still in the hospital, so Sam was in charge of CID, and he was an unremitting failure. Everyone told him so, except Chris, who just stuttered more than normal. Being an "acting DCI" meant something to Sam that it did not mean to everyone else, and he was cornered with his futuristic outlook and his pedantic leadership style in the paperwork mired 1970s low-expectations lifestyle. Every time he brought up the importance of completing and filing paperwork in a timely manner, someone somewhere in the room would mutter 'Hyde' and everyone would snarl in unison.

Sam's only relief was to walk over to the hospital and talk to Gene. Not that Gene could talk back, or perhaps even know he was there. Sam became a fixture in the ward where Gene was tended; the nurses all knew his name and some of them would score jellys off the dinner trays for him, clucking about how thin he was. They knew he had to be up by six thirty am if he was going to get a run in, and they knew he would not move no matter what they were doing to Gene.

It was not a car accident or an explosion or a gun shot that took Gene down, but his damn jacket. The lining ripped inside as he was putting it on while going down the stairwell at the office, and Gene fought it to the point of losing his footing and falling down two flights and over the banister onto the front lobby desk, nearly taking out Phyllis with him. It looked comical and everyone was laughing at first, until Sam could not wake Gene at all, and then panic gripped them, and the ambulance that took Gene away was watched by dozens of worried, horrified eyes.

Gene was in a coma, and it was the carefully considered opinion of the doctors on staff that it was simply a matter of time before the body just shut down. There was no brain activity that they could find, and life support in the 70s was, to Sam's practiced eye, just short of leeches.

He talked endlessly. He talked about the job, and his problems therein, a lot. It worried him that the calm, collected authority he had as a DCI apparently failed him as DI, and he discussed this at length, not fearing Gene's swearing at him about the absurdity of Sam believing he was ever a DCI. Sam talked about the team: Chris' poor dating techniques, Ray's attitude, Annie's growing assertiveness, and anything else he could grab. He talked about football and made many marvelously snide comments about City vs. United, and when he was finally tired enough and practically talking in his sleep, he talked about the future, which was his past. He described _Indiana Jones_ in detail, and _Run, Lola, Run_, which he discovered was difficult to actually describe at all. He relived his favorite coffee drink, a triple mocha latte with fat free milk and two non-sugar sweeteners. He gave a long, loving description of his mobile phone and all of its features, including the different ring tones he used for different people, and then found himself trying to explain 'Bollywood' in an effort to justify the ring tone Maya programmed in for herself, once, as a joke. Some nights he went into the matter of terrorism, and the mark it would make on Manchester and the world in general, and the fall of the Berlin wall and the fall of the USSR. He talked about the people he used to work with, the ones he admired and the ones who annoyed him, and particularly that one DI over on the drug squad who reminded him of Ray and pranked him once pretty hard with a rubber snake back when he was a DS. He talked about television and the few shows he allowed himself to watch, delving deeply and a bit improperly into the incredible sexiness of Helen Mirren in _Prime Suspect_. Eventually he did not even know what he was talking about, and dawn would be creaking into the room, and a nurse was shaking him awake because they were more reliable than any alarm clock.

Technically he was not allowed to stay past visiting hours, but again, the easy going 70s worked to his advantage, as did his visible and respected role in society as a police officer. As days turned to weeks and the first month was ticked off the calendar, Sam practically moved into the chair next to Gene's bed as he reshaped and reformed CID into something he could handle, and as his team began to understand that this might be the way it was going to be. Forever.

----------

Gene sat in the dark, watching the most cocked-up movie ever imagined by any crazy loon mistakenly given a camera. The woman kept reliving days of her life, and somehow it involved a robbery, and Gene sat in the theater wondering how he ended up there when he was supposed to be in his Cortina with Sam, going to visit Mark 'Fingers' Conrad about a tip. He got up and walked out, wondering if Sam slipped him a mickey and this was a joke and then he stopped, because he was in Manchester, but he had gone over the rainbow.

Nothing was the same. The cars looked odd and sleek and he expected them to take off vertically. People were talking into their hands…no, they were talking into little plastic cards, and damned if that did not sound like Sam's crazy description of mobile phones, which he often talked about at length during boring stake outs. Mobile phones were the future, and all around him, people were talking into little cards. Gene stood on the sidewalk and all the buildings were wrong, even if a couple looked familiar, and he had never seen this many people on the streets at one time, and his first thought was that the population tripled overnight. But then where did the buildings come from? He looked up. Nothing was right, nothing was normal, and he was confused, and he hated that.

"Hunt, where have you been?"

Ray looked at him, but it was not Ray, just someone very close to looking like Ray, with a hair cut even shorter than what Sam wore, and he did not have a mustache.

"Ray? That you? What the bloody 'ell is goin' on here?" Gene looked at him, certain that Ray had gone off the deep end. Along with him? Maybe. He was not crossing that possibility out yet.

"Hunt, when you can use that tone of voice with me, I'll let you know. We're on the clock. Let's move it." The man waved him to follow and Gene stood rooted to the spot. "Hunt, I'm warning you; I know you just transferred in from Hyde but I'm not too patient today, I've only had one Starbucks latte and I'm still nursing a hangover. Move." He stomped off.

---------

Thirty four days. Sam crossed off the date as he left the office. The Gene calendar was in the main room, posted visibly on one of the support columns, and it was some kind of tacky business calendar that was given out for free at the first of the year and sat around unused, until now. Sam hung it up the third day, and began marking days off on it, and while he did not tell anyone why and no one talked about it at all, everyone knew what it was and what those daily marks signified.

It was a deathwatch.

Sam kept talking and the nurses suggested, obliquely, that he might appreciate valium. He stayed out of their way but he never left and soon the hospital administration was called in. Sam yelled and fought and channeled the Bad Ass Essence of Gene Hunt until he got a private room for Gene and was given clearance to set up a cot there. He bullied and threw things in the Superintendent's office concerning the cost of the private room to the city and finally hired a brief to represent Gene's interests, which endeared him to no one. He figured even Gene would be annoyed by that, but Sam only had so many hours in the day. He was still the DI in CID, but he was acting DCI and it was assumed he would get the job after…but no one directly said that and Sam refused all requests from the bureaucracy to forward them his current resume.

----------

Gene loved his remote. It was amazing. Over one hundred channels of the wildest crap you could imagine, and a crazy limp-wristed Dr. Who but at least it was still the same Tardis. Best of all, he could get porn, right in his own room. He was not comfortable at work, because the entire place was full of Sam Tyler-ites, poncey by-the-book prisses, and that was a generous description. He was not pleased to be answering to "Ray" either, whose name was actually Frank, but Gene called him Ray anyway to everyone's confusion. He nearly beat the hell out of Ray the first day, right there on the sidewalk, when he finally realized that this was not a joke and something was seriously wrong and Frank/Ray was talking to him as if he had never heard of DCI Gene Hunt. Then he heard Sam. No one else heard Sam, but he heard Sam, and he sat on his ass on the sidewalk, Ray yelling at him about chain of command and that he did not give a damn how messed up things were in Hyde because they do things properly in Manchester. Meanwhile Sam prattled on in Gene's head about nurses and how much he hated jellys and something about brain wave activity. He listened but Sam faded out and Gene looked up at Ray and remembered what Sam said, once when he was really, really pissed, about being in a coma in 2006. Gene asked what year it was, and Ray looked at him as if he was a div, and told him it was 2006. Then Gene remembered falling down the stairs.

From that point on, Gene shut up. He was dead or in a coma or maybe just insane, and Sam would love that, so he shut up and tried to keep up. He failed miserably because he did not understand computers or mobile phones or even his precious, insanely complicated remote, but sometimes just when he thought he was going to finally screw up massively he would hear Sam over the radio or on the paging system or on one of the ever-present televisions – people had televisions in their damn _cars _-- or sometimes, rarely, just in his head.

_"So, Excel spread sheets, they are totally amazing. Spreadsheets, but…well, endless. I mean, you can put nearly everything on them. Just like an old fashioned spreadsheet, only you type it in on a cell…a 'cell' is just where the data is, I guess, hmmm….well remember what I said about electronic data storage? So okay it's like that, just beautiful. I always put my grocery list in that, because you can sort – like sorting a deck of cards, only by topic, you make columns of topics and you sort by them – and so I sorted all the food types together and then I was never on the wrong side of the store looking for vegetables in the canned food aisle…."_

"Excel's good for grocery lists," Gene would then say, for no reason, and the person he was talking to would look pleased and go on to explain exactly how to use Excel and Gene would get through another day without being fired for incompetence.

It worked just fine until the night came, when Sam would disappear and Gene was stuck in his odd flat that he was not sure how he got, and he was all alone in a terrifying way that he never thought a person could be, and all he really wanted was for Sam to start talking again. But then, at least there was the remote.

----------

Sam finally had nothing left to talk about other than work and himself. He spent a lot of time comparing current procedures and policies to what he was trained with, more time than he probably should, but sometimes it was all he could think of and it was all he thought Gene wanted to hear. That sounded crazy but that was what Sam felt, so he went with it, delving into a long, meandering discussion of 'hunches' and 'synchronicity' and procedures and protocols and acceptable methods of suspect interrogation until even he was bored. He flashed on the idea of his old remote, and decided that he was, in his own way, channel surfing for Gene. Minus the porn, of course.

-----------

He was appalled by how expensive everything was, but then, his first paycheck about sent him down in a dead faint. It was inflation and he knew that, but he was damn near furious about paying over a pound for a damn cup of coffee. And he was endlessly bitter about the tyrannical smoking ban.

There were other horrific adjustments, as well. "Ray" was his DI. Some grey-haired bitch with boney hips was, god help humanity, his DCI. He was a DS and he spent most of his time with a colored Paki boy name Ahmed who was smarter than he was, and knew a lot about the computers. The first time Gene referred to a woman as a 'bird,' Ray nearly clocked him, and the last time he referred to anyone as 'Paki' Ahmed reported him to the Boney Bitch DCI. She closed the door on them and pulled a damn good impression of Harry Woolfe reaming Gene Hunt a new asshole, and that's when he saw the picture of Harry Woolfe on her wall. He stared and she shrugged, saying that she was proud of her grandfather, no matter what happened to him at the end.

Gene realized that he might not be insane after all. He might not even be in a coma. He might really, truly be stuck in Hell, circa 2006.

-------------

Forty eight days. Sam crossed it off and knew that when the two month mark hit, the powers that be were going to 'decommission' Gene and set about installing a 'new' DCI, which everyone knew was going to be Sam. Everyone in CID hated him for it, and no one hated him more than Sam hated himself. He could not even bring up the subject with Gene, as the days crawled by.

One night, late, when his eyes snapped open and he could not go back to sleep for any reason or wish, he talked about The Roof. He thought of it that way: The Roof. Standing on The Roof, thinking about his life, or the life he did not have, and considering his options and what was left to him, and the promises he made. He wondered if it really happened, and if it did, would his mother ever forgive him. He told Gene quietly that it all mattered, that he did care, and when his feet left The Roof and he was flying that he was not scared of the fall, he was only terrified that he had made a mistake. Even now, he admitted to himself and to the dark and to an unconscious Gene, he wondered if he did the right thing.

------------

Ray sat next to him at the pub, asking him politely what was wrong. Gene could not tell him, and suddenly he felt like he really was channeling Sam Tyler. He shook his head and asked Ray if he ever heard of a snotty DI, no, DCI named Sam Tyler. Ray nodded and said he hated that twat, but no one deserved what happened to him.

"What are you talking about? For God's sake don't tell me he finally jumped off a building." Gene shook his head.

Ray looked at him, and Gene's heart stopped.

"Yeah, that's exactly what he did. Spent nine months in a coma, woke up, spent another few months in rehab, and then the second week back on the job he goes and jumps off the top of Headquarters. Walked right out of a meeting to go walk off the roof. Weirdest thing you ever heard. Left his mother and his aunt behind, and his girlfriend Maya, the best damn DI out there right now in that department, if you ask me. Well…not going to speak ill of the dead." Ray slugged his drink.

Gene broke out in a cold sweat and clutched at his drink, and waited for his voice. "They…I mean, did he leave a note? Seems…odd…"

"Not really, no note. Tyler's mother made a stink about it, actually, saying that he was mentally unbalanced and they pushed him to get back on the job too fast. Don't blame her, he was off the deep end and needed help, and next thing he's taking a flying leap."

"Jesus, Sam…where are you?" Gene looked off, closing his eyes, listening.

----------

Sam spent too much time talking about his mother. He knew that Gene was not the least bit interested in his mother, but Sam decided to talk about her. He described her cooking and her hair and her favorite music, and he fell asleep that night on the cot next to Gene humming the only lullaby he remembered her singing to him, IGolden Slumbers/I, although he thought maybe he was actually just remembering the Beatles version.

----------

Gene knocked on the door. It took him over an hour to find the place, because the car was automatic and electronic and he got lost three times because someone moved all his landmarks. He finally made it, and knocked, and a beautiful older woman opened the door and Gene was looking straight into the eyes of Sam Tyler. He could not say anything at first, and she looked at him suspiciously.

"Sam really loved that song." Gene said for no reason that made sense to him. She continued to stare at him, looking even more suspicious and a bit frightened. "Me mum sung it to me. Golden Slumbers kiss your eyes." Gene would not sing but he knew the words, and when he said them, she opened the door.

She let him in wordlessly with a surprised expression on her face, and he stalled in the foyer, looking at a range of photos of Sam, from the time he was a child to when he made DCI. School photos, vacation pictures…Sam was everywhere, taunting him, and Gene could not move.

"You know my Sammy?" She asked, holding her hands together, studying him.

"I do." He gazed at the face, unchanged by time even as the child turned into a boy and became a man. "Never thought I'd miss that annoying…er, 'scuse me, love."

"Ruth." She held out her hand and Gene shook it and he could not look her in the eyes.

"Sorry to bother you. But I heard…about Sam. There's something that digs at me, I'm sorry to ask…"

"Everyone wants to know why. You aren't the first to ask." She looked away, her expression hard.

Gene shook his head. "No. When."

She looked at him, confused.

"I know I'm goin' to sound daft…more daft than that annoying prick…er, Sam…does…did. Bloody 'ell…" Gene snorted in frustration and turned back to Sam's photos. "Christ, I miss 'im."

She fixed him tea and he asked his question and she said yes, Sam once talked about leaving his imaginary friends to die near a train tunnel, right after he woke up. It was as if he was panic stricken about it, and she knew bothered him, but afterwards he never gave her specifics, even when she asked. She explained that Sam spoke of a promise he made, and somehow she believed Sam thought he had to die to keep that promise. She shook her head as Gene crumbled inside, and she went on in anger about the lack of proper psychiatric care he received and how mad she was she did not see what he was going to do.

Gene patted her hand. "Sam is a good man. He keeps his promises. That you can always hold on to."

"How did you know him?" She finally asked.

"He saved my life in a train tunnel."

-------------

Sam woke up in the middle of the night. Nothing new, he did that a lot, always had his whole life. It took him a moment to remember where he was: at the hospital, next to Gene. There was always a light on, so the nurses could move about the room doing their job at all hours. Sam learned to sleep through that. No, this was a typical wake-up-for-no-reason-and-lie-awake-in-misery type thing, and Sam rolled onto his back, determined to really and for sure this time count all the holes in the ceiling tiles.

It was the fifty second day. He remembered that as his brain blinked awake. Gene lost over three stone in weight and was wasting away, and now it was a race to see if Sam would make DCI before Gene actually died. The respirator croaked next to him and Sam wondered if impersonal hospital machine noises were going to be the soundtrack to his life forever.

"Gene, I hate you. I hate you for this. I don't want to be here, listening to you die. I don't want to think I did everything I did so I could sit here like this. And for gods sake I don't want your damn job!" Sam spoke up at the ceiling, just talking, as he always talked when he was awake and next to Gene. It was instinctive, now, and he did not think he could stop for anything other than sleep. Sam closed his eyes, deciding to hell with the ceiling tiles, he needed to rest.

"Git."

Sam sat up so fast he fell off the cot. When he got up, rubbing his knee where it cracked against the floor tile, he was staring at Gene, who had somehow with his emaciated hands pulled the respirator off of his mouth and was staring at Sam. He was trying to talk but the one word he got out first seemed to be all that was in him, and Sam hit the emergency button next to the bed as he nearly fell on Gene, holding his face in his hands.

"You bloody fuck, I'll never forgive you for this!" Sam bent down and put his head against Gene's chest as the room came alive with nurses and staff and light, and Sam felt Gene's fingers moving weakly against his arm.

------------

Gene was humming. He loved that song now, it reminded him of Sam's mother, a damn fine handsome woman after all who knew how to make a strong cup of tea. Sam was staring at him.

"What?"

"You're humming a lullaby."

"Yes, your favorite, if I remember correctly." Gene nodded. He was propped up in bed, down to one IV in him, and up to three cigarettes a day, much as Sam squawked about it. At least the nurses were sympathetic.

Sam's jaw dropped. "You remember that? You heard me?"

"Yes, I 'eard you. I believe it takes more than brain damage to allow a man to escape the endless prattering div known as Sam Tyler."

Sam nodded in annoyance, although still looking amazed.

"You know, Sam, I been meaning to say…"

Sam scooted back in the chair, as if he was afraid the weakened and bed-ridden man was going to lash out at him. Gene looked at him, worried about how to put it, unsure for once in his life that he should say anything at all. But still, he was mad, and that was that.

"You jumped off a damn building."

Sam's mouth fell open.

"You did it for us. For the team. I know. I got no judgment on you for it, you had to make that choice and you broke your lovely mother's heart but I got to say: thank you." Gene finished and settled back in the bed and looked at the wall, hoping Sam would not get too sentimental on him, the damn fairy. He shoved his pillow around. "Don't mean I ain't bothered by it."

"How…how…" Sam stuttered.

"I got a remote." Gene held out his hand in front of him as if he was holding it. "Over one hundred channels. And porn, the nastiest shit I've ever seen. Got some good ideas I want to put into practice once I'm out of here. Snap my back right into place." Gene looked at Sam, still holding his hand out with his invisible remote. "That Starbucks muck was crap, though."

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End file.
